The Hindu Business Line : Incredible showing!

Did the branding of India at New York work? Do you think big-ticket investment will really flow into India? Who were the people who filled the halls and conference rooms at the various events? Were they all Indian businessmen, bureaucrats and the usual large groups that travel around the world with ministers and corporate czars or were foreign CEOs present?

These are the questions one is bombarded with on the mammoth $10-million Incredible India@60 campaign that was launched in New York last week.

The sceptics may have reason for their scepticism and the beginning of the Q&A session at the first event of the entire campaign — wooing the over 2-million strong Indian-American community to invest in India — was not an encouraging one. One of the first questions put before the panellists went like this: ‘What do you propose to do about the fact that the moment we land in Delhi, we are advised not to eat the salads there, because the water used to wash the vegetables is not safe?”

At home, we’ve learnt to smile indulgently at such doubts and question marks on India, particularly when they come from NRIs. But all one could do was restrain oneself from proclaiming that a journalist colleague from our group — from Delhi at that — had complained of severe stomach-pain and had to be hospitalised. Two days of New York food had apparently rekindled his ulcer complaint. Anyway, moving away from such silly questions, it was great to note that people like Cisco chief John Chambers and Vodafone chief Arun Sarin were extremely bullish about India; both have put in huge investments here and paid glowing tributes to the quality of the professionals and management in India; the former said he thought India was the best country in the world to forge a long-term partnership with. Sarin said that any company staying out of India would do so at its own peril.

But while figures in billions were being mentioned at such fora, at the Bryant park scores of Indian artists — dancers, musicians, artisans, craftspersons, etc, were busy showcasing a very colourful and vibrant India to the visitors. As the young men and women danced to Bollywood hit numbers against the backdrop of a huge model of the Taj Mahal, a few hundred New Yorkers as well as international tourist swayed and tapped to the music. It was a heart-warming sight to see Americans going ga-ga over the colourfully embroidered shawls, dupattas, cushion covers, etc from Indian states, and willingly opening their purses to buy the stuff… without any bargaining!

More important, it was not a rip-off at all. For example, an artisan was found offering an exquisitely kantha-embroidered dupatta to a customer for just $50, the kind of price you would pay in a store in Delhi. The woman getting the money was thrilled to bits, leaving you pondering over the kind of money these craftspersons make in India for the back-breaking work they put in.

Certainly the colourful posters of ‘Incredible India’ that adorned prominent points at Time Square warmed the heart. Exactly 13 years ago, on my first visit to the US, I was livid when a student at a prominent American University had said he didn’t know where India was; worse, he wasn’t ashamed about his ignorance, and had said: “I barely know where Canada is, and I certainly don’t know what people there are doing. There is enough to know and learn about my own country.”

One hopes he has travelled some distance since then. India has certainly come a long way. The strongest proof of a confident and credible India was that at the various sessions no attempt was made to whitewash reality and claim that all was hunky dory and shining in India. CII President and Bharti Enterprises chief Sunil Mittal admitted at the session with Indian-Americans that one of the biggest challenges before the government as well as corporate India was providing education and special skill-sets to millions of young Indians who did not have the advantages that many urban Indian youth enjoyed.

Giving an example, he said that 300 million Indian youth who are today in the age-group of 6-16 would move on to the 16-26 age-group in 10 years, and seek employment. A big challenge was to give them education and skill sets to ensure they were employed at decent wages and made a meaningful contribution to push, or sustain, the Indian economy’s 9 per cent growth rate.

One of the best sessions at New York was the one in which women such as Shabana Azmi, PepsiCo chief Indra Nooyi, HSBC India chief Naina Lal Kidwai and the founder of Pratham and Akshara Foundation Rohini Nilekani discussed the leadership role Indian women will play in the global arena in the coming years. Here too no attempts were made at whitewashing; each of the women admitted that there were several challenges such as poverty, illiteracy, female infanticide, maternal mortality, etc. As Shabana pointed out, India lived in several centuries but the consensus was that things were changing. Naina pointed out that a recent survey had shown that a large percentage of men in India preferred working spouses. And micro-finance ventures had begun to make a difference too in women’s empowerment.